Bush Flowers | SP-2425

DOB: c. 1974

Birthplace: Mount Doreen Station NT

Skin name: Napangardi

Language: Warlpiri

Community: Willowra NT



Geraldine Riley is an emerging Warlpiri artist from Willowra, a remote community in the Tanami Desert northwest of Alice Springs. She was born at Mount Doreen Station, NT in 1974 and is the niece of Towser Jagamara and Daisy Nabaldjari, both renowned artists. She spent her childhood learning the traditional ways of her country until her early teens when she moved to the nearby community of Yuendumu with her family.

Her Dreaming’s include Women’s Ceremony and Water Dreaming (Ngapa). She also paints artistic depictions of many different bush foods and bush flowers from the area in which she grew up and still resides. The bush flower dreaming tells the stories of flowers that grow at different times of the year and in special places. The women look for flowers in bloom, so they know where to find fruit later in the season. These foods are collected by the women, who pass on the knowledge of where to find them during traditional women’s business.

Geraldine’s style of painting comprises of the repetition of fine small dots and thin lines to show the delicate flowers from a bird’s eye point-of-view. Geraldine possesses a meticulous hand, preferring to paint either in a monochromatic or reduced colour palette.